(Newser)
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The alleged murderer of an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy had a creepy reputation around his neighborhood, locals tell the New York Post. “The parents on the block wouldn't want their kids to go near” Levi Aron, notes one. What’s more, “sometimes he would just get angry out of nowhere.” Adds a family friend: “You know when you see Charles Manson, he has that look in his eye? Levi had that look.” Nevertheless, his ex-wife was “shocked” to hear of Leiby Kletzky’s death, saying Levi “loved children.”

Meanwhile, the New York Daily News has excerpts from what it calls the "bizarre and improbable" story Aron told police in his confession. Lost on his way home from day camp, Leiby sought help, Aron says. The boy accepted Aron’s invitation to an upstate wedding and stayed the night at Aron’s house. The next day, Aron saw flyers for the missing boy and “panicked.” That’s “when I went for a towel to smother him in the side room. He fought back a little." Not knowing “what to do with the body,” Aron “carried parts to the back room, placing parts between the freezer and the refrigerator." Tracing Kletzky’s attempted route home, investigators say that his encounter with Aron could have been avoided had he been delayed by just “seconds.”